Productivity is important because it’s a huge factor in determining a country’s economy. Productivity is affected by physical capital, human capital, natural resources, and technological knowledge. If someone doesn’t have the tools they need to produce, also known as physical capital, then they are less productive than a worker who does. Similarly, if a worker doesn’t have the education they need to do the work, they’ll be less productive than the worker that went through proper training, and so on.
Public policy does affect the availability of resources needed to be productive sometimes. One good example of this is Proposition 112, which changed the oil and gas drilling policy to require companies to keep a distance of at least 2,500 feet from any structure that is occupied by humans. This got in the way of the productivity of many oil and gas companies in Colorado, as they could not drill into land that had oil which is how they achieved productivity.
Eli's blog 